Why hadn’t Duncan rung him like he’d promised? Where was he now? It must be a murder—that’s what he did, after all, even though he didn’t like to talk about it. Kit tried to imagine a body, riddled with bullets like the ones in the videos he liked, but he couldn’t erase the one image he didn’t want to see—his mum lying so still on the kitchen floor in their cottage.
Throwing the empty cola can into the bin, he glanced at the clock—almost seven. He’d refused the Major’s invitation to come down to his basement flat for baked beans on toast and a game of cards, but he supposed he could change his mind. Anything was better than staying here on his own.
THE COACHES THAT WOULD TAKE THE children to the railway station waited at the curb in front of Cubitt Town School. Parents clustered round them, straining for a last glimpse of sons and daughters as the children were marshaled into untidy queues by the teachers. Many of themothers were weeping, and the sight of his mum’s tear-streaked face caused Lewis almost as much embarrassment as the paper name tag pinned to the breast of his jumper. He felt like a bloody parcel, and a parcel without a destination at that, for they hadn’t been told where they were going. Many of the children had been bundled into winter coats and stank of sweat and damp wool; some of the smaller ones had already been sick from the heat and excitement.
The queue shifted suddenly as the children in the front began boarding the first bus, and a gasping moan rose from all the parents at once. Little Simon Goss’s mum burst into sobs, arms outstretched as she begged them not to take her baby. As Lewis turned away in mortification, he glimpsed his father at the back of the crowd. Their eyes met: he saw that his father’s were filled with tears.
Swallowing hard, Lewis lifted his hand in a wave; then the momentum of the queue overtook him, carrying him along until he was pushed and shoved up the steps of the bus. He clambered over bodies until he managed to secure a seat at the nearside window, and from there he watched as the remainder of the children were loaded. Finally they were ready, and he lifted his hand once more to his parents as the bus rumbled into life.
Then they were moving, and he felt excitement fizz in his chest—in spite of the uncertainty, in spite of the fact that his suitcase lacked many of the items on the required list, in spite of the humiliating name tag and the gas mask in its cardboard box banging against his chest. Yet as the bus began its lumbering turn into Manchester Road, he twisted round in his seat for one last look at the life he was leaving behind.
